MTC communication has been drawing attention in both the technical/academic and industry. According to the current 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) specifications, the MTC devices in the same area and/or have the same MTC feature attributed and/or belong to the same MTC user can group together and communicate to network as a unit.
However, from security point of view it is not yet described that how the MTC devices that belong to a group establish secure communication with network, including the authentication to devices and key allocation. Neither that how a MTC device establishes secure communication with network when it newly joins a group.
A method to establish such a secure communication between communication devices is disclosed in patent literature 1. In patent literature 1, when a distributing server, which distributes data, receives a distributing request from another server (requesting server), the distributing server sends a security request to the requesting server. The requesting server performs setting for its security and sends information on the security setting. The distributing server confirms the security setting of the requesting server, and then sends requested data to the requesting server if there is no problem on the security setting received.
Furthermore, related arts are disclosed in patent literature 2, 3 and 4 as follows.
In patent literature 2. a method by using hush function to generate a temporary identifier (ID) for a new wireless communication device which does not conflict with IDs of the other wireless communication devices, is disclosed.
A communication method between communication devices is disclosed in patent literature 3. One-to-one or one-to-multiple communication is performed between devices which are set as the same group.
In patent literature 4, it is disclosed that an integrating entity integrates messages received from a plurality of entity, and send the integrated message to its destination.
Patent literature 5 discloses a M2M (Machine to Machine, Mobile to Machine. Machine to Mobile) module which is connected to a network.